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Nicholas sat back on his chair, crossed his arms over his chest. “We’re dealing in conjecture, and legends. If Saleem Lanighan is the son of the line, then he is the rightful heir to the Koh-i-Noor. Not that it matters, because the British will never give it up. I know there’s more to this. But what?”
“I don’t know, but we better order some coffee. It’s going to be a long night.”
80
Paris, La Défense business district
Tour Areva, Lanighan Enterprises
Saturday evening
Kitsune walked into the black skyscraper known as Tour Areva like she owned the place. The lobby was quiet, only a single security guard sat behind a half-moon desk. He was leaning back in his chair with his feet up, watching a video on his monitor, some high Hollywood production in the middle of a battle, from the screams and explosions and screeches coming from the computer. He snapped to when he saw her approach but didn’t turn off the movie.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
“Bonsoir.” She didn’t stop walking, merely flashed a pass at him, too quickly for him to read. “My boyfriend left his phone in his office. I’m going to run up and grab it for him.”
“I’ll need you to sign in.”
She abruptly turned, grabbed the pen from his hand, and scribbled on the white sheet of paper, then kept moving.
“I can’t read this. Where are you going?”
“Twenty-third floor. I’ll only be a moment.”
He nodded—how much of a threat could this small woman be, after all—and went back to his movie.
She smiled as she reached the elevator. She’d talked her way past hundreds of security guards in her day.
She took the elevator to the twenty-third floor, then ran up the stairwell to twenty-five.
Lanighan’s offices were down the hallway, and his state-of-the-art security system didn’t hold out long against Kitsune’s deft tools. She put the rake in the lock and pulled the trigger, listening to the tumblers whine, then clunk open.
When the latch on the door opened, the security system began giving off a quiet beep every second. She slapped a counter up on the wall, attached two metal butterfly clips to the alarm, and within moments, the counter had identified the numbers of the system’s passcode, inputted them, and bypassed the system. The alarm turned off with a small squawk, and all was silent.
She would have approximately three minutes before the alarm company registered the system at Lanighan Enterprises had been turned off and notified Lanighan of the breach. With luck, the guard downstairs wouldn’t be notified for five minutes, but just in case, she needed to work quickly.
Lanighan was first and foremost an art lover, like his father. On his computer was a comprehensive list of all the holdings of Lanighan Enterprises, and where each piece of art was kept.
Since he was holding Mulvaney hostage, she’d take his art away. Most of his net worth was tied to the collection. Wipe it out, and she’d take his fortune with her.
He’d left his desktop computer in sleep mode to save energy, and, luck of all luck, it didn’t have a password on it.
“Stupid man.”
While Kitsune’s talents lay in physical extractions—it was said she had the softest hands in the business—Mulvaney was getting older, and his natural aptitudes had become slightly more cerebral. Corporate espionage paid very well, and Mulvaney designed many of the tools he used to gain information himself. Kitsune made heavy use of them in her jobs as well.
She inserted a thumb drive into the terminal and copied over Lanighan’s hard drive. The thumb drive contained a nifty little virus Mulvaney had cooked up that deleted the master files and all the backups from the host computer as it transferred. Not only would she have the information on the art collection, her thumb drive would be the only link to his company’s files. Payroll, insurance, assets, everything. It would take great effort to re-create—effort, time, and money.
She counted down as the files deleted themselves from his system, whispered to herself, “Come on, hurry, hurry.”
Two minutes to go.
She took a lap around his spacious office, bigger than her flat in London, with a spectacular view over the city. She stopped to admire the paintings on the walls. He had a small Cézanne she was tempted to cut from its frame, just to be spiteful. It would serve him right.
The thumb drive beeped, and she pulled herself away. Maybe another time.
Back out the door, silent and careful. She reset the alarm, relocked the glass doors, ran down the two flights of stairs, and grabbed the elevator down.
